


Six Feet Apart

by duointherain



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Pandemic - Freeform, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27204532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duointherain/pseuds/duointherain
Summary: Duo needs time to work through some stuff. Heero never loses faith that he'll come home. It's mostly just crack fic.
Relationships: Duo Maxwell/Heero Yuy
Kudos: 12





	Six Feet Apart

Six Feet Apart  
by Duointherain

Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing. I also don’t own the song in the Tumblr post I’m about to link. I barely own my own mind as I’m studying to much these days. Neither do I own: Song Grow As We Go, by Ben Platt.

Link: https://rosespirit.tumblr.com/post/633002398703616000/priscellie-candiikismet-coffeefoxgirl

Note: Gundam Wing is Sci-fi. It’s a m/m story. 

It had all stopped so suddenly. It hadn’t been like anything had been declared, nothing permanent. After the war they’d just sort of fallen in together. First it was the hotel room. Then it was a pizza. Duo’s laughter had saved him. Even months after he last heard it, Duo’s laugh was what he kept breathing for. It wasn’t like there was a lot of other purpose. Weapons are supposed to be decommissioned, after all. Except the memory of Duo’s laugh, Duo’s kisses, Duo sleeping next to him, these things meant he was human. Pain meant he was alive. He still had the ring, though his finger was too small to keep it on anymore. 

They’d had an condo together for nearly a year when the news report ended everything. First it was Duo’s voice, and before the broadcast ended, it was the light in his eyes. Heero had combed through that broadcast so many times, looking for anything subliminal, anything he’d missed. On the surface, it was just that the plague that had ravaged L2, that the actual virus had been identified. Heero had understood the bad memories, the PTSD. 

As much as he’d wanted to hold his lover, his partner, to comfort him, there had been something cold about Duo then, as if a dark ice had taken up residence in his soul. He was physically stronger than Duo and he could have forced an embrace, held him until the tears came, made his beloved work through the trauma, but it hadn’t been Duo on that couch. It was Shinigami. A fight with Shinigami was an equal match and Heero hadn’t really wanted to die that day. He’d have been little help to Duo if he was dead. 

It was sometime around the sixth hour that Heero realized he must have fallen asleep. Duo was gone. He’d left everything other than the clothes he had on. He hadn’t left his ring or his cross. He’d left his brush, his paintings, and Heero. 

Heero wasn’t the same as he’d been before though. He knew Duo would come back. He didn’t know when. He kept the condo clean. He dusted. He kept Duo’s favorite foods fresh in the refrigerator. In fact, he was standing in the kitchen, putting the newest box of blueberries in when he heard the pop of not quite gunfire. His reactions were still fast, so the kitchen window was just breaking as he turned. The dart hit him in the shoulder, but he kept moving, almost making it into the safe room they’d build into their condo before blacking out. It wasn’t rational, but his last thought was that Duo would save him, had saved him. It was a faith he held deeper than his will to live. 

When he came to, he was bound relatively comfortably to a wheelchair. A metallic object, a coin from the way it sounded, dropped on what was probably marble. The echo suggested a larger place, possibly a church. 

“Your vision should clear soon, Mr. Yuy. I do apologize for the manner in which you came to join me.”

Heero didn’t recognize the voice, the accent was vaguely the accent Duo used when he got very excited, but with more traditional enunciation and a bit of learned elegance, so upper class L2. “How is not as important as why,” Heero said, finding his vision still very cloudy and useless. “I don’t have any money and Quatre will kill you if you try to ransom me.” 

“That’s reasonable. I don’t need your money. I have a much more basic need from you. I’d offer you some tea, but unfortunately you wouldn’t be able to drink it.” 

“What have you got to do with Duo?”

“My goodness you are so very clever. You’re way too clever to not be using your skills. Your mouth might be dry. Would you like a lozenge?”

“No.” 

“It’s not drugged. I need you awake so that he’ll know you’re here.” 

“Is he going to kill you?”

“He’s going to try. He has no understanding of the true value of anything, no flexibility.” 

“It was you,” Heero reasoned, putting the last time he saw Duo together with current events, “You caused the plague on L2.”

“I simply wanted to clean out the vermin. Worthless, poverty stricken, lazy trash. If Khushrenada had left well enough alone, I would have been able to lay salvage to the entire colony. He was also very inflexible. I simply do not understand people who do not value money.”

“Human life is more valuable.”

“That’s funny coming from you, but you’ve taken a vow of pacifism, haven’t you. Are you still in love with your murderous little boyfriend?”

A sense of peace and contentment, even joy rippled out through Heero. It almost hurt to smile, muscles he hasn’t used in so long. Duo was coming. 

The next voice was faint, but it echoed through the church, against stone and glass,   
Daddy’s at the food store, Mummy’s out of town,  
She’s working at the hospital since Rhona came to town,  
Hide away, hide away, Miss Rhona’s come to town,  
Hide away, hide away, she’s come to take us down.”

“Me being here isn’t going to stop him,” Heero said gleefully, giddy, actually, as if he’d died somehow during the time that Duo was away and been reborn. Even if this was the only moment left in his life, he could hear Duo singing the old song, supposedly about a pre-colony plague. 

“It will. I have snipers,” his host admitted “and if he comes anywhere near us, they’re going to put holes in that splendid brain of yours.” 

Heero started humming the tune to Duo’s song. It was a very old song that he’d learned as a child. He’d never been this happy to welcome Death in all his life. 

“Shut up!” And there was the click of an actual nine mm, something old and well worn, as the safety clicked off. “I’m going to kill him myself! He should have died on L2.”

With a boom, it sounded like two huge doors were shut, there there was silence, not a foot step, though Heero knew Duo must be moving through the structure. 

“Now how’s that song go,” Heero said, rolling the words around his mouth like he’d shared the words with Duo, like a kiss, so intimate and threatening, “

Miss Rhona’s at the doorstep, I’ll keep 6 feet away,  
But Grandma needs the paper, I’ll take her some today,  
Hide away, hide away, Miss Rhona’s come to stay,  
Hide away, hide away, we can’t come out to play.”

“I told you to be quiet,” the man growled, pressing the muzzle to Heero’s knee. “You don’t need both your knees for what I want from you, smart boy.” 

Much closer, voice echoing in the larger chamber they were in, but still delicate and haunting, Duo sang the next verse, and Heero knew Duo had heard him, 

“I need to see the sunlight, I’ve not been out in days  
And here’s a note from Rhona, she wanted me to say,  
Hide away, hide away, keep 6 feet away,  
Hide away, hide away, she took us down today”

Somehow Duo’s target figured that out too. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll shoot him right between the eyes!”

The song slipped back to a hum, but it was impossible to tell where it came from. With a thrown voice, Duo was here, there, in the shadows, above, around. 

“Show yourself!” The man screamed. “Come out! We can still negotiate! I can give you all the wealth you’ll ever want. You can build a hundred new orphanages!” 

Heero’s vision was back enough that he could see the form of the man spinning, searching. This was the most dangerous moment, but he trusted that Duo had a plan, that the plan would work. 

“Come out now! Or I’ll shot him! I swear it!” 

Then Duo was there! Seemingly taller, but they were still only seventeen, so that seemed possible to Heero. That braid swayed in silhouette, the lean hard body right up behind the man who had infected and killed so many. 

“The days all run together, I haven’t changed my shirt,  
We may be getting restless, but keep on the alert,  
Hide away, hide away, Miss Rhona’s quite the flirt,  
Hide away, hide away, her touch is not inert.” 

Duo’s voice up close was the closest thing Heero could imagine to heaven and like a song bird he sang back to him, 

“Hide away, hide away, even though it hurts,  
Hide away, hide away, or six feet will be dirt.”

“Hey, Baby,” Duo said cheerfully. “Ready to go home?”

“I’m going to kill you!” The man growled, but he’d been an adult when Duo had been a child. He’d been in an office when Duo had learned to survive on the streets. He’d been in a penthouse while Duo fought in the wars. 

“No, you’re not.” Duo took the man’s pistol and unloaded it. “You’re not going to kill anyone ever again!” 

“Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” 

“I hate liars like you, I really do,” Duo said, “I’m going to give you a better chance than you gave me. Besides, if there’s anything I know for sure, it’s that the dead don’t suffer.”

“You can’t hurt me here! You’re Catholic and we’re in the cathedral,” the man’s voice had turned to a whine. 

“Someone very dear to me once asked me if I believed in God. I told her that I had never seen any gods, but I sure had seen a lot of death. I’ve just come to thank you for that.”

“I have money!” 

“No,” Duo said, smiling at Heero, whose sight was just back enough to see the white of that smile and a wink. “You had money. I have transferred everything you own to various charities and to the survivors of the L2 pandemic. I was very kind to you, as well. You write a lovely confession letter about it, about your repentance. I wouldn’t dispute if I were you. It’ll probably help you in court.” 

“I would have given you anything you wanted,” the man growled angry again, as he jerked away from Duo, a hand slapping on his neck. “What did you do you worthless piece of shit?”

“You know they have a cure now. If I were you, I’d get myself to the hospital. The longer you wait, the lower the odds are that it will work.” 

A second pistol appeared in his hands, shaking already, as he backed up a step, but kept his focus on Duo. “How does it feel now? You could have been rich, but now you’re both going to die! Try to rob me!”

He didn’t see a weakened and half blind Heero rip through the restraining straps like they were rice paper. He probably didn’t see the punch Heero landed on his face and he was definitely unconscious when Heero caught the pistol out of the air. That was all the strength he had though before he was falling too. 

Duo caught him, swept him up in his arms. “We have to go. The police are on their way. God, fuck me Heero! You weigh nothing at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Heero whispered, head on Duo’s shoulder. 

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m home now. I’ll take care of you.” 

“Good,” Heero said, before fading back into the darkness. 

<><>

It seemed like a dream when he woke, Duo’s arms around him, his warm and scent all like the breath of heaven. “You’re real?”

“Last I checked,” Duo said sleepily. “You were out cold, so I just slept in our bed. I’ll move to the couch if you want me to.” 

Heero’s first instinct was to tell him to shut up with such stupidity, but it didn’t make it even to his tongue. He’d never say that again, ever. “Sing to me?”

And Duo sang, lips brushing against Heero’s ear, also an old song, but one that he’d used as a promise to himself that he’d be coming home. 

“Ooh, who said it's true  
That the growing only happens on your own?  
They don't know me and you  
I don't think you have to leave  
If to change is what you need  
You can change right next to me  
When you're high, I'll take the lows  
You can ebb and I can flow  
And we'll take it slow  
And grow as we go  
Grow as we go”  
(Song by Ben Platt, Grow As We Go)


End file.
